Travelink Solutions (Case Study Sample)

Case Study: Travelink Solutions Student’s name Institutional Affiliation Course Professor’s name Date Case Study: Travelink Solutions 1 What is your assessment of the situation at Travelink at the end of the case? What are the underlying problems in the organization? Travelink had a lot of problems, as seen through Will's eyes. The organization needed to undergo significant change. The situation at Travelink at the end of the case is that of a company at the dying stages where there is a lot of employee turnover starting to form the top management, like in the case of Robert, who was the marketing manager of the firm. The company was also on the verge of losing good employees like Will and Yolanda, some of the best workers on the call center floor. The company also lacked proper communication. When the workflow was reduced, the company chose to lay off some of its workers, and others decided to quit due to the shift in the seasons. The company chose to send the workers an email informing them of the employees who had decided to leave the company without a valid reason as to why this did not settle well with other employees, and this caused a domino effect on the number of employees who decided to call it quits on the company. The lack of motivation also caused some employees to quit their jobs. Luther and Marie, who were trainers who took recruits through the call center protocols and taught them all that they needed to know about the process and the company, were demoted. They went back to the call center floor without a proper explanation. Will also faced the same when he was put in charge of the Datamart project and when the project failed to materialize, he was demoted back to the call center floor. The company wanted to change how they recorded and how the company's correspondence form that employees used needed reviewing and editing. The company never did due diligence on the project and failed to take off. The parent company in the US also did not have time for Will and his team to give them the right advice and reviews of some of the changes they had made on the correspondence form, which may have caused the project's failure. The team that was put in place for the Datamart project was promised a performance review and a pay rise, which was supposed to take place after six months and never materialized. The company also went through organizational changes after failing to land a client, and the pressure fell on other workers like Robert and the call center employees. These changes also affected the culture of Travelink, where they started to employ new workers on a contractual basis, like Melanie, who was employed on a three months contract. The company also compromised on training new recruits who were only trained for two weeks, unlike before when it was a one-month training program. Motivation also decreased when top management did not care about the employees. Still, they focused on the clients more, which caused the employees to reduce productivity and communication with each other; no one was willing to help their fellow employees. Customers also suffered with the changes and were put on hold for several hours. The company, in its policy, stated that a customer should not be put on hold for more than three minutes. The quality of service also declined with the increased workload on the employees, where they did not fill the required case notes into the Travelink database due to the constant pressure to log in for calls. This caused some clients to opt to part ways with the company due to its poor services. 2 If you found yourself in Will or Robert’s situation, what would you do? Why? Suppose I found myself in Will’s and Robert’s situation. I would first approach the top management and air out some of my concerns about the company and my situation. I would also ask them to consider listening to some of the grievances and issues that the employees may have and properly address them. I would ask the management to create a proper communication channel that will be effective so that different employees can air their problems and the management can give their own opinions on how to solve those problems. I would do this to avoid some of the setbacks witnessed in the company and prevent more employees from parting ways with the company. 3 If Will and Robert both decide to stay and try to advance needed changes, what changes would you recommend they focus on and how would you recommend they go about it? Would you, for example, share Will’s documentation of the problems within the company? Why or why not? If the two decide to stay in the company, I will encourage them to be the drivers of change throughout the company. They should document their change ideas in writing and have them presented to the management team because for change to occur, and there should be someone who drives it. Staying and not making the right changes means that the situation will remain the same and will not be conducive, but by sharing their documentation, the company will know where they went wrong and try and fix the problem. My recommendations would be to introduce change through the Lewin change theory (Hussain et al,2018), where they unfreeze the current practices, like the lack of communication between employees and the management, which are not productive for the business. The company should focus on moving forward from its current position. They should rally the company to be the driving force that helps motivate the employees toward change. Then implementation of change is where the company makes sure that the changes made are implemented and adhered to. Then the final stage is freezing the changes that have been made and cementing them into the culture and policies of the company. In the unfreezing stage, I recommend that the company address the lack of motivation among its employees. The other situation that the company needs to unfreeze is the lack of employees on the call center floor, where the work required is not equivalent to the number of workers. The company should also take a look at its hiring policy. The company should also check its communication policy on reviews, promotions, and pay raises. The company can focus on change where it can motivate its employees by giving them feedback on their performances and providing a rating system where different individuals are rated according to their performance (Deszca et al, 2019). The employees with the best rating are rewarded with an employee of the month reward. The compa...